Quote:Despite being allowed to tell her husband he won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, the wife of Liu Xiaobo was detained in her apartment in Beijing, China, according to a human rights group and her attorney.

Quote:Upon hearing he had received the peace prize, Schwanke said, Liu Xiaobo began to cry, and said, "This is for the martyrs of Tiananmen Square."

Quote:At least two international television networks -- CNN and BBC -- were blacked out as the Nobel committee announced the winner on Friday, and CNN's reports on Liu remained blacked out for most of the day.

Liu was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years in prison for inciting subversion of state power.

Quote:He is the co-author of Charter 08, a call for political reform and human rights, and was an adviser to the student protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989.source:

my question is this: is china weak or strong, it locks up dissidents, puts innocent people incommunicado, closes down access to news channels and internet sites in order to control what can and cannot be accessed.

my personal view is china is extremely weak and insecure as a government. and extremely strong as a people. specially the younger generations. under such a strict regime as china has, these people are prepared to go to prison for what they believe is right. some even to he point of death. i know many countries are the same but for me this guy is a genuine hero. so! china, is it a goody or a baddy?

thethingy

10-13-2010, 02:08 AM

China's strong in military terms and I think that's the one that counts , the last real test of Chinas strength was in the Korea war and they did beat the US/UK/Aust/Canada forces just by there sheer volume of troops.

As a people I think the Chinese get a lot of stick, they are a real honourable bunch in the "agreement" sense but they do lock up people without charge and things but the US/UK do that now too.

Communism is dying in China, helped by the handover of Hong Kong so the state is changing and becoming more westernised, give them 50 years and they will be a full democracy, they [China] are a young nation as communism only took after the fall of Japan after the war, it took Russia some time to modernise but they are getting there and so will China.

the strength of their military is now weakened by commercialism and greed. they've been westernised to a point of no return. they're proud of the good ole days but would hate for them to return. they won north korea and lost their real identity. sadly they tale censorship to heady heights and still play the "there is no such thing as freedom of speech card" i think they want to embrace the western culture yet still be able to control the mass through oppression. i think they'll fail, i think to some extent they already have. it's not a weak economic power any more that really has little to lose.
n korea is but not china.

I for one don't agree that military might's what makes a country "strong", at least it shouldn't be, not this day and age. China's certainly strong in the economic sense.

I read an article pointing out that the trouble with China is that it wants to be a superpower, but is insular in the sense that it doesn't want to deal with the responsibility that comes with it to address global problems... heck, it doesn't even try to do anything about the comically blatant human rights issues plaguing it (maybe not all violent, but worrying in how systematized and sanctioned it is). To me thats not a "strong" country at all... its a country going through an ethical crisis. They try to move to the future but cling to the worst parts of the past. Sonner or later somethings gonna snap.

"Strong" is problematic as a descriptive term in that it can be defined in multiple, even contradictory, ways. One can be physically strong in the sense of being capable of beating someone to a pulp or morally(?) strong in choosing not to do so. One could even be charismatically(?) strong in being able to convince others that one could and would beat them to a pulp even when one couldn't.

I think China's greatest strength is in the form of the latter. Sure, there are a few brave democracy protesters, but in a country of over 1 billion people? I think the leadership of China is very strong in the sense of keeping the people subjugated. And very smart in the way it has slowly relaxed its iron grip--I don't expect revolution in China any time within at least the next decade or two.

The people are potentially very strong but, until they throw off the mindset they have been indoctrinated with since childhood, they're effectively weak. And since the goverments control over their lives is so strong, and since they can see things getting better (ie. the grip is being relaxed) then they're unlikely to do that. A people has to be being squeezed ever tighter for a revolution to erupt.

As for China's position on the world stage. It punches below its weight (just as England punches above its). So you could certainly say that as a country it is weak in terms of the influence it exerts internationally.

Militarily? Nobody would ever try to invade it but I wouldn't expect to ever see it invading a strong country either. Taiwan will never take China and China will never take Taiwan.

i think we have to view strong and weak differently for each part of it's make up.

i think within the next decade it will go from strong to weak economically. they'se already asking for the chinese currency to be better valued. it will take time but sooner or later it will level out like the usa did. one of the main problems china has at the moments is if anyone starts playing trade embargo or import taxations. either would diminish it's holdings in a short amount of time. at present it's own market isn't rich enough to by chinese products like the west does. where as the usa would love it if americans stopped buying chinese goods.